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About Me

is an unapologetic, bleeding-heart liberal who writes about everything from politics to private parts. A TV-writer in a former life, her credits include "Big Spender" for Animal Planet,and "A Child Too Many," "Cradle of Conspiracy" & "Deceived By Trust," for Lifetime

Monday, December 19, 2016

The line wound all the
way out the post office door.Bundled
against the winter chill and laden with last-minute packages to be sent to her
family, Dawn tried to ignore the chatter all around her.

“We’re going to my
daughter’s house for Christmas…”

She would be alone this
year.She couldn’t face the pitying
looks from her sisters; the whispers.She never has finished anything she started.

“…Molly and all the
kids will be with us…”

Just her and Bruno, the
Rottie they’d adopted as a puppy.She’d
agreed to allow Sam visitation in order to get custody.For once she was grateful he’d be with his
new girlfriend in the coming week.

“… My parents are
flying in on Tuesday…”

Her mother cried when
she said she wasn’t coming.More
guilt.The postal line edged
forward.

“… We’re having an open
house on Christmas Eve.I hope you’ll
come…”

Dawn had turned down
all her friends’ invitations.She was
going to take her days off from work to stay in her pajamas, eat junk food and
binge-watch sad movies: “Love Story,” “Terms of Endearment,” and “The Notebook”
were already in her queue. All she’d felt since the divorce was anger. Her
therapist had told her she needed to cry, mourn, get it all out.

“Merry Christmas...
Happy Holidays!”

Damn. This really sucked. Oh, hell…

She took out her
phone.Maybe she could still book a
flight.

May this holiday season find you all surrounded by those you love most.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

I awoke this morning to gentle cloud cover over the
peaceful landscape of my rural valley.I
breathed in the cool air, gazed out at the beauty that surrounds and nourishes
me and gave thanks to God for such blessings. Coffee was brewed, dogs fed, I planned my day: Some writing this morning, a ride on my
horse mid-day, plants to water and trim this afternoon, and tonight “The
Tonys.”I cursed CBS for not
broadcasting them live on the West Coast and that was my biggest concern of the morning.

Then I turn on the Internet.I do this with some trepidation because
yesterday morning I did so only to find that some mad man had gunned down
22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie; a beautiful, young girl whose life held
such promise, now gone. Although, not a day goes by without news of a killing
somewhere, it often passes my attention like background noise, a steady hum that
one learns to tune out, for to focus on each senseless death would plummet us
into a state of constant grief.

My Internet opens to Google news.I expect some additional details on Grimmie’s
killer.I expect to still feel
anger.I expect to still feel sorrow for
the Grimmie family.I do not expect:

Orlando, Florida (CNN) A
gay nightclub here was the scene early Sunday of the worst terror attack in
U.S. history since 9/11. * 50 people were killed inside the Pulse club and at
least 53 people were injured, police say.

My mind explodes, thoughts shooting off in all
directions like a rack of pool balls, its whole shattered, its parts seeking
escape, much like what I imagine the inside of that nightclub to have been: The terror, the shock, the complete horror that
this could be happening – again.

I can’t watch the news.I can’t absorb such carnage anymore.My mind struggles to comprehend the
incomprehensible.What was it I was
going to write about today?Any attempt
at words now seems foolish and self-serving, yet I yearn for some order.

Raised in an age where murder was mostly the stuff
of cops-and-robbers shows, where nobody carried around guns unless they were
hunting, where a TV news story of a killing was still considered aberrant, the
world I see now so rampant with disregard for human life is
unrecognizable.When did this mass
madness infect us?How did we get
here?How do we cope?

Outside my window, my personal world remains
untouched.The hillsides the color of
wheat dotted with oak trees; deer graze, a spring-born fawn at their sides,
birds continue their song.The contrast
is surreal.I turn off the Internet, turn
off the television, shut out everything but that directly in my view.I pull this cloak of serenity around me,
huddle in its comfort, tell myself I’m safe.I shelter in place.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

I recently won a Flip Video Recorder.How I got it has nothing to do with this
post, but when I win something I always like to brag a little.

I told a friend about this and said that I hadn’t yet had
time to read all the directions.She
replied that whenever she gets some new techno-gadget she puts the manual in
the bathroom, which led me to quite seriously inquire: “Just how much time to
you spend in the bathroom?”

This got me thinking about all the people I’ve known over
the years who take reading materials into the bathroom and lock themselves in
there for what I consider an inappropriate amount of time -- something that has
always perplexed me.

I’m a get-in-there-get-it-done-and-get-out-type.If I want to read, I’ll get comfy, pour
myself a libation of some sort and settle in by the light of the sun or a good
reading lamp.I truly fail to get the
appeal of sitting on a hard porcelain seat, hunched over, elbows drilling into
my thighs and reading for any length of time, but apparently there are those
who like to linger.

What’s up with that?Do
they honestly not know that they have business to do and they’re hanging out just
to play it safe?Because I always
know.It’s no big mystery.There’s a certain pressure, if you will,
that frankly I learned to identify as a child.

I suppose for some it may be the only place they can find a
few moments of uninterrupted peace away from the demands of others. Yet another reason why I’m single.

Lately, I’ve felt a different kind of pressure.I’m a big believer that if you sit at the
keyboard long enough, something will materialize – that 90% of writing is just
showing up.

As you can see by where I’ve gone so far with this post I’ve
proven my premise.Yes, it’s crap and I’m
not proud of it, but when a blockage occurs in the flow of ideas it’s a relief when
anything emerges.Of course, then the proper
thing to do is to flush it.However,
like a three-year-old excited to show they made poo, I just had to share.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

“Rattle ofWant,” is a diverse collection of 46 flash fiction stories and one
novella-in-flash.Rich in
characterization that bleeds onto the page, this collection takes the reader
through the full landscape of our own human complexity as experienced through
the prism of our desires.

Jayne:What intrigues me about these stories and
held me as a reader is that there is so much at stake for your characters in
each story.It’s not just that they
“want” for something; it’s the underlying element of desperation that drives
their desire.Was that an intention of
yours in putting together the collection?

Gay:This is a collection of the work I’ve done
over the last seven years. As for the desperation, that’s what underlies the book
and the title, Rattle of Want.When I was trying to place this group of
stories with a potential publisher, he asked me what linked them together.I didn’t really have any idea because I
hadn’t written them to link together.I’d written them to tell stories that came to me as I was studying the
craft of flash fiction.

Jayne:That’s interesting then that it seems to be
a recurrent theme in your writing.I can
relate to that.Lately, I’ve noticed
that, without intentionally meaning to do so, I write a lot of stories that
include an element of death or dying.I’m
not sure what that says about me.

Gay:My themes seem to always have to do with
wanting and whether or not a person should pursue that want. It has been a
constant in my life. I'm a people-pleaser, or what I used to call "a
stroke monkey," not feeling good about myself unless I did something to
earn some kind of praise. My desire has
been to be my own person, to not rely on other people's estimation of me, and I
think that figures into what I write.

Jayne:“Rattle of Want” is a fabulous title.

Gay:I have to tip my cap to Randall Brown for
digging that phrase out of a story of mine and suggesting I use it as a
title.One of my earliest craft lessons
had been that a character must want something.If they don’t want anything, then they don’t
have anything to strive for, and if they aren’t striving, what is the point of
the story?Why tell it?

Jayne:Yes.And
it’s not all a life or death struggle.We all experience a thousand little desires and frustrations to those
desires every single day.I think that’s
what makes your characters so relatable.

Gay:I learned as I began to write flash fiction
that a story doesn’t need a big dramatic desire.It can be something as ordinary as wanting
to isolate yourself and having a boy climb over your fence to sell you
magazines (“Beyond the Curve”).Or as in
my story “Oranges” wanting to feel better about yourself so you buy oranges
from a homeless girl on a freeway on ramp and not getting the result you
expected. We all experience desire, sometimes we’re desperate in that desire,
and that’s what I try to tap into.

Jayne:One of the things I'd like to touch on is the
kind of rural voice that is prominent in several of the stories.Is that something from your own
background?

Gay:Yes, absolutely. My mother was from
south Louisiana and my father was from northeast Iowa. Although we moved
from Iowa to California when I was six, we went back to both places every
summer. I grew up to the sound of that flat mid-western accent, “you bet,”
and the Cajun clip so unique to the bayous, “how you do?” I have an ear for tone and twang so it just comes
naturally.

Jayne:I’d like to talk about the origin of some of
the stories – the seeds from which they sprung.Tell me a little bit about “Chalk Dust.”I love this story.It’s has a very eerie “Through the Looking
Glass” feel.

Gay:“Chalk Dust” was one of my earliest stories
published online in Rusty Barnes’ Night
Train. There is a “Chalk It Up”
festival in my city every summer where artists swarm over sidewalks and create
amazing work.One year there was a set
of stairs that seemed to twist into the ground.It was almost hard to believe it wasn’t real.I knew immediately I wanted to set a story about
that staircase in the middle of that street.

Jayne:“What’s Left” is an interesting piece in that
it is only one page long, but spans thirty years in the life of the character
and is structured chronologically from present to past.

Gay:“What’s Left” was written for a contest and
came from two short pieces that I pulled together and added the third segment. Combining
those three pieces and rewriting them is what created the structure. Structure for me usually comes during the editing phase.I respond to a prompt and then need to fit
that

response into a shape.

Many stories have come from prompts at The Flash Factory at Zoetrope online.“Fishbowl” came from a photo prompt, as did
“Losing Ground.” The character in “Blusterfuck” is a composite of husbands of
several women I’ve known over the years.Most of what I write comes from the world around me, things I observed
in people, objects that catch my attention.Everything feels rich with meaning.It’s just digging down to get the gold.

Jayne: Well, readers don’t have to dig far to find
the gold in this collection.I’ve read
several of the stories more than once and because they are so subtly layered, with
each reading I feel like I discover something new.Congratulations, Gay.And thanks for sharing a bit about your
remarkable process.

Gay
Degani has had three of her flash pieces nominated for Pushcart consideration
and won the 11th Glass Woman Prize. Pure Slush Books released her collection of
stories, Rattle of Want, (November 2015). She has a suspense
novel, What Came Before, published in 2014, and a short
collection, Pomegranate, featuring eight stories around the theme of mothers and
daughters. Founder and editoremeritusof Flash Fiction Chronicles, she is an editor at
Smokelong Quarterly and blogs at Words
in Placewhere a list of her published work can be
found.

Monday, February 8, 2016

They gather at the barbed wire fence to gaze upon
me, large eyes dark ponds of innocence, expressing wonder at this white-robed
creature who now beckons them with outstretched hands and baby talk.

“Look how sweet you are.Yes you are little moo-cows.Come say hello…”

Each spots an ear tag, some with names:Meg, Sue, Lily.These are the lucky ones, small in stature,
shades of soft brown fur, destined for breeding; designer cows to be shown in
bovine beauty pageants.The others,
sturdy, black Angus, are tagged with only numbers, and destined for
T-bones.I imagine taking a Magic Marker
and changing all the numbers to names, as if that would alter their fate.

The taste of yesterday’s tri-tip still lingers.I step back from the fence, fearing #302 can
sense my duplicity.